Roberta Gelb has written a terrific article over at Law.com, in which she warns law firms to Beware the Hidden Costs of Bad Formatting. Roberta explains how the incorrect (read: lazy) use of Microsoft Word can cost a law firm as much as $19,500 per legal secretary, per year.

Talk about apropos for me. Yesterday, I spent at least four hours retroactively applying proper formatting to a document that we had to transmit to local counsel – three states away – to be filed that day.

This nail-biting experience was thanks to the legal secretary whose associate is assisting my boss with the case in question. She doesn’t know Word Styles and isn’t interested in learning, so I was stuck fixing her sloppy document while she sat mostly idle.

Thus, my firm suffered a double loss: First, they lost a couple hundred dollars’ worth of my time, while I did someone else’s work and my own work didn’t get done. Second, they didn’t get their money’s worth out of the secretary whose work I was doing.

One by one, law firms are making the switch to MS Word. Many are doing it kicking and screaming, but they have no choice. It’s client-driven. So when are they going to start requiring all legal secretaries to learn to use MS Word correctly, rather than letting the incompetent ones palm their work off on their more conscientious coworkers?

Law.com Legal Technology: Beware the Hidden Costs of Bad Formatting